Speeches by Twigg.

“The final point once again covers some of the things you have said, but it is good to get it on the record. Is Rimmer wrong to downplay the risk of the reprisals against the individuals in Afghanistan as a result of their former affiliations, rather than their current threat or resistance to Taliban rule? Did he basica…”

“Again, I think you have covered part of this, but just to get it on the record: you believe that Rimmer is wrong to say that the Taliban getting all of the dataset was unlikely to profoundly change the existing risk profile of individuals named there. Is that completely contrary to what you understand the situation to …”

“That is the important point. You are saying that the evidence on the ground could not in any way match his conclusions?”

“Why do you think he reached those wrong conclusions?”

“Thanks for taking the time to give evidence; it has been fascinating listening to you. I will not repeat some of the stuff, but from what you have said so far, you think that Rimmer reached the wrong conclusions.”

“The Home Secretary’s statement is most welcome. The proposals that she set out today are a significant step in the right direction. The comments that she made about the damage to the social fabric of this country are important. I have a specific question about asylum seekers who have committed crimes and are deported, …”

“To follow on from Lincoln Jopp’s questions, I naively thought when I first came into Parliament many years ago that the Ministry of Defence was the military headquarters. But, as we have been talking about, there are now other headquarters and so on. We can talk about the rights or wrongs of that, and you have already …”

“The objective of the objectives is to get there.”

“We have civilian oversight with the Secretary of State.”

“Do I take it from what you have been saying that we have not really set the right objectives?”

“This is my last point, because you have covered some of it. This reform process is supposed to be delivered in the autumn, but we are nearly out of the autumn, so we will see. Given the various scenarios you have painted, what would you say are the top two or three outcomes or indicators that would say whether it is a …”

“But factually, we have now gone from two people who are equal and technically cannot outvote each other to four.”

“But they do not have to have equal standing with the CDS—is that right? I am just putting that out there because of the questions around reform. We have now created a Quad, and they are all, as far as I understand it, of equal standing. Basically, there is no one now, unless you go to the Secretary of State or Minister…”

“Why does the permanent secretary need to have equal standing with the CDS?”

“You both said—I know this myself from when I was in there—that there are tensions between the permanent secretary and the CDS over issues as time goes on.”

“This will be a short intervention, I am sure.”

“Because of the number of Members who have indicated that they wish to speak in the debate, with the authority of the Chairman of Ways and Means, I am imposing a time limit on Back Benchers’ contributions of two and a half minutes.”

“I remind Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister; I have not been notified of any such. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates. I am keen that all interventions sho…”

“Sorry—obviously, you know more of the detail than we do. At that point in 2024, given what you have said that the judge said, why would the Government then continue with it? What was the purpose for them to do that, if you believe that there was an opportunity at that point to say, “This is what happened”?”

“Keeping this in the scope of misleading Parliament and what you have said so far—we will not go into the Rimmer review; other colleagues will come on to that—I think you said early on that they had the original injunction in place and you understood why that was in place. At what point do you think they should have lif…”